When famous artists like Chagall depict rabbis, they are painted as bearded men, often hunched over ancient texts or wrapped in their prayer shawls. When depicted in film, a rabbi is almost always shown as a saintly older man, most often with a European accent, with Hollywood representations almost exclusively always showing rabbis as men. This stereotype is so common that American Sign Language’s word for “Jew” borrows from this imagery, showing the mimicking of running one’s fingers through beard hair.

In contrast to these traditional rabbinic images, Rabba Sara Hurwitz—who...

Some Massachusetts Catholics are denouncing and some are extolling a move by Pope Francis on Friday to restrict celebration of the Latin Mass, the church’s standard form of worship until the 1960s, in what the pope says is an effort to unify believers.

The edict allows bishops to regulate the Latin Mass in their dioceses, but adds certain conditions to the rite’s celebration that will in effect curtail it. The decree, for instance, mandates that, from now on, new priests must get Vatican approval in order to say the rite.

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When there are mass shootings, like this week in Chicago, or the previous week in Toledo — or, really, any week in this country — Episcopal Bishop Scott Hayashi thinks of that split second in a Tacoma record store decades ago. The beat when he turned toward a man with a gun to ask, “What did you say?” and saw his own 19-year-old face in the man’s mirrored shades before his body hit the floor.

Hayashi spent two months in the ICU and almost died after being shot in the stomach during the robbery. He now advocates with a group of other U.S. Episcopal bishops on the issue of gun...

Jacob Steinmetz's blazing fastball helped make him a baseball draft trailblazer.

The New York native is believed to be the first known practicing Orthodox Jewish player to be selected by a major league team, going in the third round — 77th overall — to the Arizona Diamondbacks on Monday.

The 6-foot-5, 220-pound Steinmetz, from the Long Island hamlet of Woodmere, is a 17-year-old right-hander whose repertoire features a fastball that sits in the mid- to upper-90s and a knee-buckling curveball. His draft stock rose considerably while playing for the Elev8 Baseball...